by Vi Keeland
She furrowed her brows. “Nat’s not here. Didn’t Dad tell you? She’s staying at her mom’s this week.”
I looked at Garrett as I responded to Izzy. “No, he didn’t mention that.”
Izzy was a smart kid. She picked up on what was going on. Rolling her eyes, she shook her head at her father before looking to me. “Dad wanted to spend time with me, but Nat didn’t want to interrupt my school routine.” Her gaze shifted to her father. “My father offered to sleep on the couch. But Nat didn’t want him under the same roof as her because he would try to play games.”
“Isabella,” her father warned.
“What?” she said. “It’s the truth.”
I smiled. Love this kid. “Thanks, Izzy. I’ll see you soon.”
She grinned. “You will?”
I winked. “If I have anything to do with it, I will.”
***
I’d been sitting on the stoop since dark.
I’d watched the dark blue night sky give way to yellow and orange as the sun rose. It had been years since I’d taken the time to watch a sunrise or sunset. This is living—not fucking my way through California waiting for a twitch in my finger to show up. I’d decided over the last three hours that if I was lucky enough to get to have Natalia in my life, I wanted to get up an hour earlier each day so I had sixty minutes more to spend with her.
At almost eight o’clock, I heard the door unlock behind me. I stood from the second step down where I’d been waiting and turned to find Bella. She took one look at me and glanced back over her shoulder, pulling the door closed behind her.
“My daughter is in pain.”
I looked down. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Is there another woman?”
“No, ma’am. There is no other woman.”
She pondered that for a moment.
“Do you love my daughter?”
“I do.”
“Are you here to make things right with her?”
“It’s complicated, Bella. I’m not gonna lie to you. But I hope things will turn out okay.”
She stared at me for a moment. “You know how Italian mothers make meatballs from scratch?”
I furrowed my brow. “I think so.”
“You take the meat and put it in a metal grinder.” She used her hands to demonstrate a crank going around.
“Okay…”
Bella pulled her purse onto her shoulder and straightened her spine. “That’s what I’m gonna do to your balls if you hurt my baby again.” Then she kissed both of my cheeks and walked down the steps, leaving me standing there on the stoop.
She yelled over her shoulder as she hit the sidewalk. “Door is open. She’s in the kitchen. No hanky-panky on my couch. I just got new plastic put on.”
I chuckled to myself as I watched her walk off. Then I took a deep breath and let myself into the house.
Natalia yelled from the kitchen. “What did you forget this time?”
She had her back to me as she poured a cup of coffee with one hand and held her phone with the other, reading something.
I waited until she set the pot down so I wouldn’t startle her and spoke softly. “Hey.”
She jumped and whipped around to face me. Blinking rapidly, as if she thought she might be imagining me standing there, she clutched her cell phone to her chest.
I took one hesitant step closer. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Hunter? What the hell are you doing here?”
“Your mother let me in. I came to talk to you.”
The initial excitement in her face disappeared as a mask slid over it. She pulled at the tie of her robe to cinch it tighter.
“That’s funny. I contacted you a few weeks ago, and you didn’t want to talk then. You couldn’t even bother to respond to my text. Didn’t have much to say at the christening either.”
I shoved my hands into my pockets and looked down at my feet. “I saw your ex on TV going into your building.”
I’d been up for twenty-four hours with nothing to do but think about what I was going to say to her, but the look on her face told me that apparently that was the wrong thing to open with. She was pissed.
Her hands flew to her hips “So you thought my ex was visiting me and what… I was fucking him?”
Her tone told me yes was not the way to respond to that question, even if it was the accurate answer. “I needed to talk to you.”
“About what?”
She was angry.
She was defensive.
She looked ready to slap me across the face.
Yet she’d never been more beautiful to me. God, I am so in love with her. That thought made it impossible to hold back the smile that spread across my face. Rightly so, upon seeing it, Natalia looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
“What the hell are you smiling at?”
I took two hesitant steps closer to where she stood. “You’re incredibly beautiful.”
“You’re a jerk.” Her words were hard, but her face softened a little.
“I am.” My smile grew wider.
“What do you want? I have an appointment to get to.”
She still hadn’t moved, so when I took another step forward she was trapped with the sink at her back and me in front of her. I took her lack of kicking me in the balls as a positive sign. My heart raced, and it felt like if I didn’t touch her, it might explode in my chest.
“I missed you.” I took another step and closed the gap between us. She still didn’t run, so I kept pushing my luck. Reaching up, I cupped both of her cheeks in my hands. My eyes closed at the incredible feel of her soft skin beneath my fingers. I took a deep breath in, relishing her intoxicating scent. She’d definitely just taken a bath. I smiled, opening my eyes, and slowly leaned forward to brush my lips against hers. “Sweet pea,” I mumbled. “Love that smell.”
The phone in her hand dropped to the floor, yet she made no attempt to pick it up. I took that as another good sign and went in for more. Planting my mouth over hers, I kissed her again. Only this time it was more than a brush of lips. Leaning her against the sink, I kissed her long and hard. I licked her lips, urging her to open, and she moaned into my mouth when our tongues tangled. My hand at her cheeks snaked around to her neck, and I gently squeezed to tilt her head and deepen the kiss. She moaned again, and the sound shot through me.
God, I missed this.
I missed her.
How could I have thought I was living before?
We kissed for a long time, and when it broke, her slack jaw began to tighten almost immediately.
“I can’t do this again, Hunter. You hurt me.”
I leaned my forehead to hers. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry I hurt you. I’m crazy about you. I didn’t mean for it to happen. Just the opposite. I wanted to keep you from being hurt.”
After a minute of shallow breathing, she swallowed. “I don’t understand, Hunter. You hurt me because you wanted to keep me from being hurt? That doesn’t make any sense. What’s going on?”
I looked into her eyes. It was the moment of truth. For the last ten years I’d hidden behind a disease I wasn’t even sure I had. I wanted to live, and I wanted to live for and with this woman.
“We need to sit down and talk.”
She nodded. “Let’s go in the living room. My mother went to my sister’s to babysit. She won’t be home for hours. We’ll have privacy.”
I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing. I wasn’t sure this wouldn’t end in even more of a colossal disaster than the last time, but I needed to take a leap of faith. Sitting on the couch, I clasped my hands, looked down, and silently said a little prayer. I hadn’t done that since my brother’s funeral.
Then I started at the beginning…
“When my mother was ten, her mother went in for routine knee surgery and died on the operating table. She had a latent heart condition that caused complications with the anesthesia. Because of that, my mother grew up with an irrat
ional fear of doctors. Then, when my brother and I were little, our father died from head trauma suffered during a car accident. Because he was awake at the scene of the accident and died later in the hospital, my mother blamed the hospital for his death, too. It exacerbated her fear of doctors, and she basically never went to one again.
“When I was nine, we started to see signs of her having Parkinson’s disease. I don’t know how long before that it had started, but at that point, she couldn’t hide it anymore. Her hands would shake, and she had trouble walking. Because she refused to go to doctors, my uncle treated her as best as he could and made a diagnosis from observations. But she would never take any of the medications he prescribed and wouldn’t get blood work done. She died at home when I was seventeen.”
I paused. “I know you know some of this. But I need to tell everything from the beginning.”
She reached over and took my hand. Squeezing, she said, “Take your time.”
“My brother started showing symptoms of what seemed like Parkinson’s in his late teens. He didn’t tell us about it until he couldn’t hide it, either.”
“Oh God. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize Parkinson’s struck so young.”
“It usually doesn’t. But Jayce didn’t have Parkinson’s disease. Neither did my mother.”
“I don’t understand.”
I took a deep breath and held her gaze as I spoke. “They had Huntington’s disease. It’s a genetic condition. My brother had early-onset, which causes a rapid deterioration compared to adult-onset. It’s basically like having Parkinson’s combined with ALS. By the time he was in his early twenties, he struggled to walk or feed himself. He’d started to choke trying to swallow his own saliva. He hung himself to end his life. I found him.”
Natalia’s hand flew to her mouth, and tears began to stream down her face. “I’m so sorry. Huntington’s is a horrible disease.”
“Thank you.”
I looked away, not wanting her to see the tears forming in my eyes, and worked to swallow them. A salty burn scratched at my throat. When my eyes returned to hers, they were met with heartbreak and compassion. As I worked up the courage to finish the story, to tell her the reason I’d basically run away from her, her sad eyes grew wide as saucers.
She’d put the rest together herself.
“It’s a genetic disease?” she said.
I nodded.
“So that means it’s hereditary, right?”
I looked in her eyes. “It can be. Huntington’s has a fifty-percent chance of passing to the child of a person who carries the genetic mutation.” I took a deep breath and conjured up every last bit of courage I had to say the words I’d never said to anyone but Derek out loud. “After my brother died, I chose not to have the test. I didn’t want to live my life waiting for symptoms. But after I left you and went back to California, I realized I wasn’t living my life at all. So I finally had the test done last week. The results should be in by the end of this week.”
Chapter 39
Natalia
I threw up.
I’d told Hunter I needed to go to the bathroom because I’d felt the familiar burn in my esophagus that happens right before. My vision was still blurry from tears as my head hung in the toilet, staring down at the water.
The bathroom door clicked open, but I couldn’t lift my head. Hunter sat on the floor and wrapped his body around mine. The warmth of his chest enveloped me like a heated blanket. I leaned my head against his shoulder and let it all out.
He held me tight for a long time, rocking us and silently stroking my hair. When our eyes met, he spoke low. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to tell you until I knew my results.”
“Were you even planning on telling me if the result was positive?”
He didn’t have to speak his answer. His look said it all. I wiped my nose. “Well, then I’m glad Garrett finally had a use. How did you know I was at my mother’s anyway? I hadn’t even told Anna yet.”
“Izzy told me when I went by your place.”
I leaned up. “You saw Garrett?”
“Yep.”
“How did that go?”
“He tried to make me think you were there with him, together.”
I exhaled. “Such an asshole. I hate leaving Izzy there with him, but I knew she wanted to spend time with him, even if she’d never admit it. She loves her father, and they have a lot of work to do to fix their relationship.”
Hunter nodded. He went quiet for a while after that.
“What are you thinking about right now?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know if I did the right thing telling you. This was really selfish of me. We can’t be together if it’s positive.”
“What do you mean we can’t be together if it’s positive?”
“I’m not going to subject you to that so that you can wind up being my nurse. I flew to New York because I’m a jealous asshole. I told you because I owed you the truth. The men in your life have all disrespected you with lies, and I couldn’t do that. But I won’t put you through watching what I saw happen to my brother.”
“That’s not for you to decide.”
Hunter closed his eyes. When he reopened them, he said, “There’s no point arguing over it now. I’ll have the results in two days.”
“Fine.” I needed a few days for it all to sink in and to formulate an answer to every one of the arguments he would make against us being together if, God forbid, the test was positive.
We sat on the bathroom floor for another hour while Hunter answered my questions about the disease. He was clearly well educated on the genetics and statistics, along with having experienced it first-hand with his mother and brother. The one positive thing I learned was that Hunter was past the age that would be considered early-onset, which was when symptoms occurred before the age of twenty. Adult-onset generally hit between the ages of thirty and fifty, but could strike even as late as eighty, and the progression of the disease was much longer—taking from ten to thirty years to cause death.
“Come on.” Hunter finally stood and helped me up. “Let’s get out of this little bathroom.”
“I have appointments today that I need to call and cancel.”
“You don’t have to do that. I need to find a place to stay and crash for a little bit. I’ve been up since yesterday morning.”
“How long are you staying?”
“Not sure yet. At least the next two or three days.”
“Stay here at Mom’s with me.”
“Does she have one of those metal things you use to grind up meat?”
I scrunched up my nose. “Yeah. Why?”
“No reason. She makes good meatballs. But I’d rather get a hotel, if you don’t mind.”
“Okay.”
Even though I’d already taken a bath, I took a quick shower hoping it would help clear my head while Hunter went on my laptop to find a hotel near Mom’s house. When I finished getting ready, I found him sitting up on the couch, but sound asleep. I took a moment to appreciate the man and consider how difficult the decision must have been to tell me. He hadn’t told anyone except his lifelong best friend since finding out more than ten years ago. That was a lot for one person to hold in. I decided I wanted to show him how much I appreciated him being honest with me, so I straddled his hips and woke him with my lips pressed to his.
“Mmmm…” he groaned, coming to life.
I might’ve started the kiss, but he certainly took over fast enough. Hunter wrapped both of his hands in my hair and used it to keep me in place while his talented tongue led mine in a tantalizing dance. When I attempted to break the kiss, he caught my bottom lip between his teeth and tugged.
“Where you trying to go? I could get used to being woken up like this.”
I rubbed my nose with his. “When I was a little girl, whenever my sisters and I wouldn’t confess to doing something wrong, my mom would promise no punishment for telling the truth and say, ‘Honesty is always rewarded.
’ Then when we came clean for whatever we were hiding, she’d give us a lollipop or something as a reward.”
“Oh yeah? You saying you’re going to give me a lollipop for dumping my depressing truth on you?”
I pulled back enough so he could see my sinister smile. “Close. I was thinking you’d be the lollipop. I’ll go to my appointments; you go to your hotel, take a hot shower, and climb into bed naked. I’ll wake you with your honesty reward.”
***
Minnie was my last appointment for the day. It wasn’t professional to have favorite patients, but I’d come to visit her even if I didn’t get paid.
She stared at the elevator panel with stress lines etched all over her face as she waited for the car to arrive. She’d only checked the door lock three times before I urged her to walk to the elevator. Not checking the fourth time was killing her. Obsessive-compulsive behavior isn’t about not being able to resist the compulsion. It’s about the inability to stop thinking about the compulsion when you do resist it. She hadn’t needed to check that the door was locked a fourth time, but she was unable to stop thinking about checking it now. I attempted to distract her while we waited for her slow-as-shit elevator.
“So…Hunter is back.”
That did the trick. At least temporarily.
“Oh? I knew he’d come to his senses.”
I smiled. “That makes one of us.”
The elevator doors opened, and I had to put my hand on her shoulder to guide her to step inside. It wasn’t easy for her to leave the floor. But today we were going to go down to the lobby, step off the elevator, and wait for a new one before coming back up to check that the door was locked again. Breaking the pattern a little each week was working, albeit slowly.
“You were right, by the way. He had a secret he was trying to protect me from. He’s got a health condition. Well, it’s complicated, but he was afraid to get involved with me and drag me into what could amount to some rough years, medically.”
Minnie was quiet as we stepped off the elevator and waited for the next one to arrive. I knew from prior experience that focusing was difficult for her until she was on the upswing, heading back toward the relief of her stress. Today it was stepping into the elevator that alleviated some of her anxiety, knowing she’d soon be able to touch that door handle again.
